Robyn’s ‘Sexistential:’ 4 standout songs

Robyn’s cover of her own 2002 song, “Blow My Mind” from her album Don’t Stop the Music, transforms a Ray Of Light-esque trip hop slow burner into a acid-synth march, submerged in a pool of gorgeous synth pads and vocoder vocals. A quick chord-change turnaround gives the whole track a surprising fizz, all of which helps buoy Robyn’s expressive vocals, her lyrics becoming a request (nay, demand) for transformative sensuality from an unnamed lover.

Robyn helped define what it means to make a “cry in the club”-banger for a new generation with her always essential hit “Dancing On My Own.” She’s since created new entries to that micro-genre’s canon, and now we have her latest offering: “It Don’t Mean A Thing,” a heart-thumping bit of digital anthemics that deploys its titular refrain as a call to lean into the loving.

It was the Robyn-rap heard around the world. The title track and highly–memed single features one of the more straightforward bits of pop storytelling in recent memory, as Robyn, quite plainly, re-tells the story of having a one-night stand while 10 weeks pregnant after IVF. Along the way, there’s mention of Adam Sandler, his film Don’t Mess With The Zohan, Adam Driver, and general night-time lust. If you’re like us, its chorus — “I like to go out / Wear something nice / And push” — has become an ear worm and a mantra.

Maybe I’m being dramatic but this is one of the best album closers I’ve heard in recent memory. Produced with Max Martin, “Into The Sun” is everything you want out of a record’s swan song: a grand flourish that arcs triumphantly but is still tempered with a melancholic edge. In Robyn’s case, it’s her fear of failure after spending a whole album exploring middle-aged motherhood and rediscovering her sexual desires, all while pushing against narrow-minded societal expectations around age and gender. “Into the sun / I might be wrong / And burn on the entry / It’s my knight’s crusade,” she sings on the hook that includes an insane motorcycle-like rev that propels the song forward. It’s so satisfying in nearly every emotional dimension, executed with the precision that only two genius Swedes can.